Kamran Pakseresht

Can you explain the series of tubes and bellows and lenses you used to allow your digital camera to properly focus on the film plane? This is the part I always struggle with.

Thanks for all the great info Aapo! I peeled up the top circuit to get a look underneath - wasn’t able to find much when searching these part numbers, but I bet at least some of these are the binary counters you mentioned.

I’ve been interested in understanding how crystal sync works a bit more clearly lately, and I happened upon this crystal control unit for Bolex cameras for a mere 5 dollars. I don’t own a Bolex so I really just got it so I could take a look inside. I figured I could share the photos here. The part I was interested in myself was the oscillator- which appears to be a 24khz oscillator - is this related to the 24fps this unit is intended to lock the motor to? I’m not sure if this unit actually governs the motor or if it just provides the signal needed for the camera to do that work.

I am curious about this - as I thought almost all film productions these days are scanned, edited digitally and then printed back out to film. Are you going to be using a flatbed editor?

I’d try shooting with a lens hood or a matte box to see if it makes a difference. I am curious if the lens you used is made for a larger format? Meaning a larger back element than a regular 16 lens?

Paul at Visual Products is an Eclair expert- definitely can recommend them. That being said, this doesn’t immediately sound like an issue with the camera itself - Nicki is right that you want to evenly distribute the slack on each side when you push your loop in and it’s possible it got shifted when you removed the magazine and the re-engaged it later. Try shooting another 100ft roll- without ever removing the magazine, if it comes out perfect, then it’s likely operator error and you can just adjust your workflow to watch out for issues like this. And yes - I usually tell anyone looking to buy a used film camera to factor in a few hundred dollars for a CLA - just so you can ensure it’s running smoothly, quietly, and will last a long time. Because you’re in LA, you can probably save a big chunk of change in not having to ship it out by having Tyler take a look at it.

I was discussing the flicker issue with Paul from Visual Products - here is what he had to say:

Paul is amazing - he just converted my eclair ACL to Ultra 16 - has been so thorough and helpful the entire time and always very detailed in responding to questions. VP definitely gets my seal of approval.

I just ordered one on ebay - I'll try and get some designs made for them once they arrive - hopefully I can send a couple to some users on here to test as I don't have an a-minima myself.

I actually have thought about something very similar. I would like to make 200ft split reels for my eclair ACL - just to make spooling up 200ft cores simpler. if I could get my hands on one of these, I’d be more than happy to put up the designs for it - I’m not sure how they work differently from a split reel (do these ones open up in the same way?) - does the A-minima require these reels or can the A-minima use simple cores as well?

There seems to be a lot of negative comments towards Nikons video offerings - but everything I’ve read about their latest cameras (Z8 and Z9) is that they are incredibly capable and actually competitive with the other cameras in their price bracket. I had started to think that Nikon was making a bit of a comeback based on the reviews, but the comments here seem so far in the other direction that it’s confusing. I definitely assumed this to be great news for Nikon and video cameras in general.

Based on measuring the threads and experimenting with the sizes until I reached a lens cap that screwed on smoothly without excessive friction - the specs in onshape for my cap threads (the inner threads that can thread onto this mount) are: Pitch: 1mm Threads Per Inch: 25.4 The diameter of the cylinder that I ran these threads on was: 52.5mm If you read the patent - it suggest the mount is basically just a c-mount with twice the diameter (2 inches) and the same thread pitch - but while the diameter might be accurate - I'm not so sure about the thread pitch as I seemed to arrive at different results from the patent.

It's great you started a thread about this! I recently have been working on reverse engineering some of these adapters. Here is the official US patent for the mount for those interested: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/3682069 I was very motivated to create an adapter for Micro Four Thirds lenses but after actually starting to calculate it and model it - it's just not possible, there is not enough room. I think there is a possibility of a mod - where you remove the 6 screws holding the TS camera mount to the camera body and replace it with a Micro Four Thirds mount - but I will need to get a cheap/parts only ACL to test this on. I did make a 3d printable model of a cap that fits the TS mount as a starting point to all of this work - you can find it here. What type of lens mount adapters do you think are the most useful/would you most like to see?

That actually sounds like a fun project - I might give that one a shot

In my opinion, for the price you're looking to spend - buy an Eclair NPR (that's running) on Ebay for ~2k - send it to Tyler or Visual Products for a CLA (VP does a CLA for between 3 and 400 dollars) - and spend whatever is left-over on adapters and lenses. Once you have one that's been looked over by a professional (assuming it was running to begin with) - they should run well for many years to come. They are relatively quiet sync-sound cameras that are a great intro to the format if you're just trying to get up and running. At 4k - this is probably where you could realistically start. If it was me and I'd never shot on 16mm before and I could give myself advice - I'd tell myself to just buy a Arri 16s or a Beualieu R16 that was gone over by someone and already running - you can do so much with just a solid camera, you don't necessarily need sync sound to get familiar with the format and explore the medium.